The Day of the Triffids: A Review

I'm part of a Goodreads science fiction and fantasy reading group, and The Day of the Triffids was the June science fiction read. A classic science fiction novel that I just got around to reading.

The story begins with Bill Masen in the hospital having undergone some eye treatment and thus blindfolded. As no one answers his calls, he eventually pulls off his blindfold to a world drastically different from prior to his visit to the hospital. Many, many people seem to be blind, except for Bill. During Bill's hospital visit, he listened on the radio to a description of green meteor shower. After, the blindness happened. So Bill struggles to survive in this post-apocalyptic world. He first attempts to make do in London, avoiding initially raiding stores. He encounters a few sighted people, Josella Playton being one he allies with early.

Bill and Josella decide that abandoning London is preferred and begin working with a group who proposes to set up a new community in the country. However, a raid by a group with different ideas enslaves Bill to do work for the blind. Bill struggles against his chains, but when free, he does help the group of blind people, until a mysterious plague begins wiping them out. Bill flees to the country. Eventually, he is reunited with Josella and they, together, set up a home on a farm with a blind old couple and a young girl.

Triffids are a mysterious plant that appeared a number of years before and appeared globally. Bill, prior to the meteor shower, was a triffid expert. Triffids themselves are mobile and one of Bill's former colleagues thought that triffids talked and knew human weaknesses (using a whip-like stinger, often going for the people's eyes). With the mass blindness, triffids begin attacking people. In the city, attacks are rarer, but in the country, triffids are common sites at the fence Bill builds to keep them out. Triffids seem to possess intelligence, but ultimately, they remain a mystery as Bill and the family flee mainland Britain to an island where the triffids have mostly been eradicated.

During his travails, Bill witnesses despondency, murder, tyranny, and enslavement. He struggles at times with an overwhelming loneliness. He overcomes, but he is altered forever. As society attempts to rebuild, some seek a democratic solution while others are bent on tyranny, though thinking it for the greater good. Plague and triffids typically defeat or make extremely difficult any efforts to reorganize.

The novel, which is short, is a masterpiece. Themes of the Cold War definitely are apparent. The Soviets, so Bill hypothesizes, may be the source of the triffids--a bioengineering experiment gone bad. And the meteor shower has many attributions within the book, though one of them is that the US and USSR had launched any number of satellites that caused the shower. All of this remains, however, mysterious. We, just like Bill, never know the actual origin of the triffids or the meteor shower. Even if the triffids are sentient is left unanswered. Evidence available suggests some sort of sentience, but how much. Are they somehow linked with the meteor shower, or are they simply taking advantage of the situation.

Besides the themes typical of the Cold War (inscrutable countries using technology that is capable of destroying the world), Bill encounters a predicament of modern life: When all basic services collapse, how does one relearn all the lost skills... growing food, dealing with illness, etc. Bill struggles, but he does learn. He needs others; he needs a village.

The novel ends without us certain of the ultimate "victory" of humans overcoming triffids, their collapsed world, or themselves, though we have a sense of hope they do. Bill is a realist, and he faces the world knowing that the end may not come out well, though that does not stop him from trying.

Highly recommended. I'm sorry it took me so long to read it.

Review can be found on Goodreads as well.